Property
rights cannot work if they are not clear, and scholars generally assume
that the best way to attain this goal is to define property rights by
relatively rigid rules. However, recent evidence suggests that the
intuitive view may be mistaken. The subprime crisis shows that clear
rules do not produce clear titles if owners do not follow those rules.
And during the twentieth century property law moved dramatically away
from rigid rules toward flexible standards. Standards turn out to be
crucial to property law, as well as increasingly important in property
doctrine.

Empirical evidence and historical experience alike
demonstrate that rules cannot be applied without being supplemented by
standards to determine the scope of those rules. Conversely, standards
achieve predictability through core exemplars, precedent, and
presumptions. Thus rules and standards are less distinct from each other
than one might imagine. Standards perform crucial functions for
property law. They perform systemic functions to shape the
infrastructure and the outer contours of the property system by (1)
setting minimum standards compatible with the norms of a free and
democratic society, (2) protecting the justified expectations of
consumers, and (3) responding to externalities and systemic effects of
the exercise of property rights. Standards also determine the scope of
property rights by (4) distinguishing cases; (5) resolving conflicting
norms; (6) excusing mistakes; (7) escaping the "dead hand" of the past;
and (8) deterring the "bad man" from abusing property rights.

A few pages of the article discuss land use regulation and the shift from relatively rigid early zoning to a world in which "[n]egotiated zoning is now the norm." The core of the argument is that:

On the surface, negotiated zoning is less predictable than Euclidean zoning. One either was or was not entitled to build a certain type of structure under the old rules. But of course the predictability of traditional zoning rules was always a bit of an illusion. One could always seek a rezoning of the property by the city council, for example, or sue to obtain a variance. Since zoning boards are political creatures, they tend to grant variances if no one objects.

. . .

In some ways the modern system is more predictable. All one has to do is to obtain agreement among relevant actors within a regulatory framework. Determining whether one can or cannot successfully complete a planned development requires a prediction about whether one can convince relevant audiences that it is a good idea. Experienced developers are likely to be more accurate in guessing whether this is the case than in predicting the outcome of a lawsuit determining whether a rezoning is or is not "inconsistent with the general plan."

The text enables students to approach the substantive material as would problem-solving, community-based practitioners. They do so by entering the community of Ourfuture City, whose Old World immigrants built a vanished industrial prosperity; and of its neighborhood, Milkweed Park, whose new immigrants and long-time residents confront the stresses of physical and financial isolation, racial segregation and economic disinvestment. Students assume the roles of advisors and advocates for the families, teachers, clergy, bankers, entrepreneurs, non-profits, public institutions, and activists of this prototypical struggling municipality.

Not hyped enough in the book's materials is that it comes with a map of the hypothetical Ourfuture City that lays forth a visual representation of the very abstract, but very real factors playing into ED and CED issues. I can't say how much I love to see this.

For a number of years I have participated in the Urban Land Institute's wonderful UrbanPlan role-playing game (see San Francisco ULI's UrbanPlan page), which provides students a typical redevelopment scenario, a map of a complicated area and a game text replete with gentrification factors, a homeless shelter, historic buildings, and lots of other factors that pose the constant dilemmas of redevelopment. In the UrbanPlan game, students have to find a way to develop an area that "pencils out" and then, competing against other student groups, sell their vision of the development to a "city council," which is composed of ULI volunteers.

I absolutely love UrbanPlan, as I believe it provides students a hands on experience in the trade-offs implicit in any redevelopment. The trouble is that UrbanPlan is very complex and requires a little too much class time to fully integrate it into a law school curriculum. (UrbanPlan's intended audience is high school seniors, but I have also seen it played by graduate students in planning departments and development professionals who struggle under the game's rigor!).

And that is why I am excited to dip into this new book. If there is a way to bring some of that sense of embodied decision-making to the fast-paced legal classroom, which is seems this new book seeks to do with its role-playing component, I would certainly adopt it. It will be exciting to take a closer look.

The case arose when the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland
sued HUD, saying that it demolished old public housing high-rises where mostly
African-Americans lived — only to move the residents to equally segregated
housing and poor conditions in other parts of the city.

Attorneys for the residents said Friday that the government in
effect “perpetually locked” African-American families in neighborhoods of
concentrated poverty, violating federal civil right laws. The settlement, which
would cover all claims in the case, was filed in conjunction with Baltimore
City and the Housing Authority of Baltimore City.

As the Legal
Defense Fund, which worked with the ACLU on the case, notes
in its press release, the court had ruled in 2005 “that the U.S. Department
of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) violated the Fair Housing Act by
unfairly concentrating African-American public housing residents in the most
impoverished, segregated areas of Baltimore City. Judge Garbis held that
HUD must take a regional approach to promoting fair housing opportunities
throughout the Baltimore Region.”

The
settlement requires HUD to allocated money towards expansion of the Baltimore Housing Mobility
Program, which has been in place since a partial settlement in the 1990s. The program has enabled over 1,800 families
to move to neighborhoods in other parts of the city and to surrounding suburbs. Under the settlement, the program will, among
other things, fund vouchers and counseling over the next seven years for up to
2,600 additional families.

The case is
particularly interesting given its regional approach to questions of housing
and segregation. Housing vouchers can be
used throughout the region, enabling participants to voluntarily move to
suburban areas with greater employment and educational opportunity. The program provides extensive housing
counseling and mobility assistance to aid families interested in moving to
lower-poverty neighborhoods. For more details,
see this 2009 report discussing the progress of the
program at that time.

UMKC Law and the ABA Section on State & Local Government are hosting an education law symposium with The Urban Lawyer, preceded by the 2012 Gage Lecture, featuring Nicole Stelle Garnett (Notre Dame) on "School Closures in Urban Neighborhoods: Lesson's from Chicago's Catholic Schools."

America’s educational landscape is changing with the rapid disappearance of Catholic schools from the urban core. Yet, studies show negative effects on neighborhoods when schools close. Scholar Nicole Garnett will discuss what this means for urban and educational policy.

Professor Garnett's lecture is free and open to the public; the program and registration for the Oct. 5 symposium are available at the website.

First and foremost, I want to apologize to our loyal readers for disappearing into the ether for the past few weeks. Getting ready for the first days of class meant something had to give, and this time, it was the blogging. But I'm back! And starting later this week, I'm hoping to try something new: a series of posts about the same topic--and one of the biggest land use stories of the summer that we have not yet touched upon at this blog--California Governor Jerry Brown's second try at building a peripheral canal around the California Delta. More on that later this week...

Today I'm dropping in to commend the John Marshall Law Review on putting out an excellent volume with articles from many of the land use field's luminaries on the 40th anniversity of the Quiet Revolution in land use control. We have already blogged about the conference, and Patricia Salkin's article in this volume. However, a hard copy of the full volume landed in my mail box over the weekend, and I just couldn't help but write to say that, if you have a copy in your mail box, take the time to read it, and if you don't, go get it! Articles by Fred Bosselman, Patricia Salkin, Daniel Mandelker, David Callies, Edward Sullivan are just the beginning. Of course, the Quiet Revolution in Land Use Control was a landmark 1971 publication (available here) authored by Fred Bosselmann and David Callies. If you haven't checked out the original, download it and add it to your reading list!

The NY Times has a recent article on home businesses in New York City, some of which operate in violation of zoning rules. The businesses discussed include one-room hotels, children's used-clothing shops, personal training, and a vegan cookie business. Operating a business from home is of course, partly motivated by high commercial rents. The article notes that the number of these businesses in New York is unclear:

Because so many home businesses operate under the radar, it is hard to
say just how many there are. Complaints to the city’s 311 telephone
system about illegal commercial use in a residential area have been
decreasing. In 2011, the tally was roughly 2,150, down from about 2,450
in 2008. Even so, the data may not accurately reflect the full range of
complaints about businesses, because annoyed tenants who call 311 to
carp about ungodly noise may not know about zoning rules.

Not every home business is legal, but the prohibited businesses are not always obvious:

Not surprisingly, kennels and veterinary practices aren’t allowed to
operate from homes. Zoning rules also prohibit a curious mix of other
businesses, including advertising and public relations. Stock brokerages
and offices for real estate, insurance and interior design aren’t
supposed to operate from a desk in the bedroom. Running a commercial
kitchen at home isn’t permitted, either — “home processors” like Mr.
Semosh cannot use commercial-size equipment.

New York City's Zoning Resolution, at Section 12-10, expressly includes “fine arts studios,” “professional offices,”
and “teaching of not more than four pupils simultaneously” within the definition
of permitted “home occupation.” It expressly does
not include, among others, advertising or public relations, barber shops and
beauty parlors, interior decorators’ offices, stockbrokers, ophthalmic
dispensing, and real estate or insurance offices. In addition, the code prohibits the sale of
articles produced elsewhere and exterior displays. One person who does not reside at the unit
may be employed “in connection with the practice of a profession.” Finally, the home occupation must not “produce offensive noise, vibration, smoke,
dust or other particulate matter, odorous matter, heat, humidity, glare, or
other objectionable effects.”

It is not clear that the prohibited occupations are more likely to produce these nuisances or would cause more traffic or related negative externalities in a neighborhood than the permitted home occupations. It is worth considering whether the categorical acceptability of "professional offices" and the outright prohibition on "beauty parlors," without regard to a specific uses' impact on neighboring properties, reflects a class-conscious determination of what is desirable and should be replaced by a more careful consideration of specific factors that affect residential neighborhood character.

For a discussion of how home occupation regulations might be modernized, see this publication from a few years ago by Patricia Salkin.

Biofouling
is the undesirable accumulation of microorganisms, plants, algae,
arthropods, or mollusks on a surface, such as a ship’s hull, when it is
in contact with water for a period of time. Biofouling and its
traditional remedies pose serious environmental consequences, including
1) the transportation of nonindigenous aquatic species that can
outcompete native species for space and resources, thereby reducing
biodiversity and threatening the viability of fisheries or aquaculture,
2) the harmful accumulation of zinc- or copper-based toxins, and 3) the
increase in weight, decrease in flexibility and mobility, and topical
damage of marine mammals hosting biofouling organisms. There are a
number of existing legal mechanisms that address biofouling under
international law. However, due to the complexity of biofouling, this
Article posits that existing mechanisms are inadequate for
comprehensively regulating the problem, leaving aquatic species
susceptible to numerous negative effects from biofouling. To address
these inadequacies, we recommend biofouling also be mitigated under the
federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). First, we consider the Florida
manatee (Trichechus manatus latirostris) as a case study species, and
suggest that Florida’s Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D)
areas develop a Safe Harbor umbrella agreement under section 10 of the
ESA to create a new generation of ecological harbors that are safe from
the dangers of biofouling. The agreement would include a Habitat
Conservation Plan (HCP) that incorporates a combination of behavioral
and infrastructural biofouling mitigation techniques to be applied
regionally across estuary, freshwater, and saltwater ecosystems. Second,
we suggest that both public and private owners of existing, proposed,
and expanding marina developments be encouraged to voluntarily sign Safe
Harbor Agreements under the RC&D areas’ umbrella agreement to avoid
owners having to navigate the long and strenuous process of obtaining
individual HCPs. The comprehensive biofouling management strategy
proposed as a model here would require RC&D areas to carry out a
range of biofouling best management practices that would protect species
and the habitats on which they depend from the adverse effects of
biofouling.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has an article providing an overview of the city's new zoning code, which replaces its 1962 code. The new code allows high-rises to be built more easily in the city's central commercial district and along its waterfront as-of-right. (See map of new zoning districts.) It also "assumes the city's population will grow in the future, and it encourages higher density buildings to accommodate the newcomers." (Note: Philly's population has declined from slightly over 2 million in 1960 to slightly over 1.5 million today.)

According to the article:

Because the previous code was so outmoded, the Zoning Board of Adjustment had gotten in the habit of handing out variances almost at whim, even when a project deviated dramatically from the neighborhood context. The haphazard process invited abuse from powerful gatekeepers, most of them Council members. It often seemed you only needed to make a campaign contribution to obtain a variance in Philadelphia.

Developers advocated for a more predictable development process, which would enable the city to better compete for residents and jobs. The new code is approximately 200 pages shorter than its predecessor.

Two thoughts come to mind after reading this article. First, the discussion surrounding the new zoning code echoes the considerations raised in relation to tax reform, particularly the desire for simplicity and predictability and the concern that a code laden with amendments, overlays, and other complexities favors sophisticated actors. Second, as Philadelphia pushes greater density and potential population growth in Center City, what will become of outlying city neighborhoods, which have seen substantial population declines (and a significant number of vacant properties) in recent decades? In May the city launched a website mapping its inventory of 9,000 vacant properties, approximately one-quarter of the estimated 40,000 abandoned buildings in the city.

Davis said he was only abiding by Patsy Ruth Davis' wishes when he buried her outside their log home in 2009, yet the city sued to move the body elsewhere. A county judge ordered Davis to disinter his wife, but the ruling is on hold as the Alabama Civil Court of Appeals considers his challenge.

While state health officials say family burial plots aren't uncommon in Alabama, city officials worry about the precedent set by allowing a grave on a residential lot on one of the main streets through town. They say state law gives the city some control over where people bury their loved ones and have cited concerns about long-term care, appearance, property values and the complaints of some neighbors.

But even some of the objecting neighbors are still concerned with the individual property-rights aspect of this situation:

A strong libertarian streak runs through northeast Alabama, which has relatively few zoning laws to govern what people do with their property. Even a neighbor who got into a fight with Davis over the gravesite – Davis said he punched the man – isn't comfortable with limiting what a homeowner can do with his property.

"I don't think it's right, but it's not my place to tell him he can't do it," said George W. Westmoreland, 79, who served three tours of duty in Vietnam. "I laid my life on the line so he would have the right to do this. This is what freedom is about."

The article profits from the analysis of Samford law prof Joseph Snoe (invoking Mahon (which I just taught) and other important precedents):

A law professor who is familiar with the case said it's squarely at the intersection of personal rights and government's power to regulate private property. While disputes over graves in peoples' yards might be rare, lawsuits over the use of eminent domain actions and zoning restrictions are becoming more common as the U.S. population grows, said Joseph Snoe, who teaches property law at Samford University in suburban Birmingham.

While it's a quirky fact pattern, this sort of case is intensely personal, and goes to show the broad range of issues that can end up in disputes over land use law. Thanks to Troy Covington for the pointer.

James Y. Stern (Virginia) has posted Property's Constitution, forthcoming in the California Law Review. The abstract:

Long-standing disagreements over the meaning of property as a matter of legal theory present a special problem in constitutional law. The Due Process and Takings Clauses set forth individual rights that can only be asserted if “property” is at stake. Yet the leading cases interpreting constitutional property doctrines have never managed to articulate a coherent general view of property and in some instances reach opposite conclusions about its meaning. Most notably, government benefits are considered “property” for purposes of due process but not takings doctrines, a conflict the cases acknowledge but do not attempt to explain.

This Article offers a way to bring order to the confused treatment of property in constitutional law. It shows how a single definition of property can be adopted for all of the major constitutional property doctrines without the calamitous results that many seem to fear. It begins by arguing that property is best understood as the right to have some measure of legal control over the way a particular item is used, control that comes at the expense of all other people. It then argues that legal rights are a kind of private property and that, while courts and commentators are correct that legal entitlements to government benefits — so-called “new property” — should receive constitutional protection, they mistakenly believe the property at issue is the good that a recipient has a right to receive, rather than the legal right to receive it. The Article proceeds to show that legal rights are the only kind of things whose existence government can altogether extinguish and therefore that ownership of legal rights is the only kind of property right government can terminate without conferring equivalent property rights on others. The Article further argues that while due process protection should be read to apply whenever a person is denied an asserted property right (a deprivation), takings protection should only come into play when property rights are transferred from one party to another (a taking). Combining these observations, the Article concludes that termination not only of “new property” rights but also of old-fashioned in personam legal rights should trigger due process but not takings protection. This analysis provides theoretical coherence to constitutional doctrine that has thus far been lacking and it sheds light on the essential characteristics of property rights as a general matter, helping theoreticians understand more clearly the core structures of property law.

Daniel R. Mandelker (Washington University) has published a new book on the important topic of sign regulation under the First Amendment: Free Speech Law for On Premise Signs (2012). Professor Mandelker's short summary:

The
handbook explains the free speech law that determines how sign
ordinances for on premise signs should be drafted. It first discusses
the general free speech principles that apply, and next the free speech
law that applies to different types of signs and the regulations that
apply to these signs, such as height and setback requirements and design
review.

Free Speech Law for On Premise Signs is available for free download at the United States Sign Council website, and also at Professor Mandelker's excellent website Land Use Law (the website--a companion to the Mandelker et al. Casebook, has a great collection of statutes, cases, scholarship, photos, and other resources for land use students and practitioners).

One of my most interesting teaching experiences was having a nontraditional student who was semi-retired from the billboard business; his experiences of the interaction between free speech law and sign regulation were what inspired him to go to law school. Free Speech Law for On Premise Signs, which explains these sophisticated legal concepts in a readable and practical way, will be very valuable to any planner, policymaker, or lawyer whose work brings them into this area.

In Vietnam’s major cities, a once-booming property market has come crashing down. Hundreds of abandoned construction sites are the most obvious signs of a sickly economy.

“I can say this is the same as the crisis in Thailand in 1997,” said Hua Ngoc Thuan, the vice chairman of the People’s Committee of Ho Chi Minh City, the city’s top executive body. “Property investors pushed the prices so high. They bought for speculation — not for use.”

The article describes a Vietnam that sounds similar in many ways to the US and other places: a real estate bubble fueled by overpromotion; a recession that has left land development projects uncompleted; a disproportionate impact on younger workers; hard times for certain sectors of the economy, while others are relatively unscathed. Of course with Vietnam having dived in to the global economy in the past generation, the American recession and the European debt crisis are also having effects in Vietnam. But it's still quite interesting that the trigger seems to be a real estate bubble.

This led me to wonder who owned this new land. It turns out that the US Geological Survey’s
Hawaiian Volcano Observatory provided a helpful
answer to this question a while back.
The Hawaii Supreme Court, in the 1977 case State by Kobayashi v. Zimring, 566 P.2d 725, decided the
issue. Granted this is not an issue of broad relevance, but I found their resolution of the question interesting.

In Zimring, the State
of Hawaii sought to quiet title over 7.9 acres of new land added after a 1955
eruption extended the shoreline. This
new land, which was termed a “lava extension,” was adjacent to land purchased
by the Zimrings in 1960, after the eruption.
The lava flowed over the purchased land and into the ocean, forming the
new 7.9 acres of land. After purchasing
the adjacent land the Zimrings entered onto the new land, bulldozing it and
planting trees. The State even assessed
the land and collected taxes from the Zimrings on it. Nonetheless, the court found in favor of the
State of Hawaii and in doing so distinguished lava flows from the common law
doctrine regarding accretion of land.

The court first reviewed the history of Hawaiian law
regarding private property ownership, concluding that it made clear that “land in its original state is public land
and if not awarded or granted, such land remains in the public domain.” It then considered whether there was a
relevant doctrine from the common law or traditional Hawaiian usage that
applied in the case. It concluded that
there were too few similar lava flows over private land to have established a
usage.

It then
considered the common law, first declaring that “[n]o court sitting at common
law has had occasion to deal with the question of lava extensions.” The court distinguished the common law
regarding accretion, the gradual increase of land through the deposit of
soil. Under the common law, owners of
contiguous land take title to land formed by accretion. In contrast, the court declared, “in cases
where there have been rapid, easily perceived and sometimes violent shifts of
land (avulsion) incident to floods, storms or channel breakthroughs,
preexisting legal boundaries are retained notwithstanding the fact that former
riparian owners may have lost their access to the water.” Similarly, it noted that under California law
if an accretion is caused by artificial means, the newly created land does not
belong to the upland property owner. The
court concluded that “[r]ather than allowing only a few of the many lava
victims the windfall of lava extensions, this court believes that equity and
sound public policy demand that such land inure to the benefit of all the people
of Hawaii, in whose behalf the government acts as trustee.”

It can be
expected that the Loihi
Seamount, which is being formed by volcanoes southeast of the Big Island, will
similarly fall under control of the state when and if it emerges some thousands
of years into the future.

In most cities today, fire has been reduced to a sporadic and isolated
threat. But throughout history the constant risk of fire has left a deep and
lasting imprint on almost every dimension of urban society. This volume, the
first truly global study of urban conflagration, shows how fire has shaped
cities throughout the modern world, from Europe to the imperial colonies, major
trade entrepôts, and non-European capitals, right up to such present-day
megacities as Lagos and Jakarta. Urban fire may hinder commerce or even spur it;
it may break down or reinforce barriers of race, class, and ethnicity; it may
serve as a pretext for state violence or provide an opportunity for displays of
state benevolence. As this volume demonstrates, the many and varied attempts to
master, marginalize, or manipulate fire can turn a natural and human hazard into
a highly useful social and political tool.

In the United States, we’ve come to think of forest fires this way, as we spar over the rights of wealthy people to build their vacation homes in flammable places like Malibu. But the history of urban fires is similarly political, in large part because it reflects the story of how governments came to view and value property.

"Fire is, of course, this threat to human life, but conspicuously it’s about the destruction of property," Sand says. "Is it the obligation of the city fathers or [government] to prevent peoples' private property from being destroyed?"

The University of San Diego School of Law will host the Fourth Annual Climate & Energy Law Symposium on Friday, Nov. 9, 2012. This year's title is Law in a Distributed Energy Future. Here is the symposium overview:

The University of San Diego School of Law's fourth annual Climate and Energy Law Symposium will examine emerging law and policy approaches to encourage and accommodate distributed energy solutions. Historically, electricity has been generated by large power plants located far from consumers and delivered via long transmission lines. While that model remains largely intact, a gradual shift is occurring toward more localized energy production.

The symposium will bring together legal and policy experts from across the country to address a variety of key issues including the latest developments in the rules that govern the electricity grid change to incorporate distributed generation, possibilities for generating energy at the neighborhood and community levels, the legal and policy innovations at the federal, state and local levels that are most needed to usher in a distributed energy future.

Keynote
addresses will be given by Commissioner Carla Peterman of the California Energy
Commission, and Ken Alex, senior policy advisor to California Governor Jerry
Brown and director of the Office of Planning and Research. The program and registration info are at the website.

This article aims to determine whether China is heading toward a U.S.-style market crash in its housing market. Rather than attempting to maintain any suspense, I will disclose here that my conclusion is, “Who knows?” China and the United States have dramatically different histories, cultures, governments, economies, and legal systems. Anyone who claims to have a definitive answer to this question is overly confident.

My more modest goals in this article are to examine the available evidence and see which way it seems to point. The article begins by listing and describing several different ways in which the American housing market failed. It then evaluates the consequences of these failures for the U.S. housing market. Next, the article demonstrates some of the key respects in which the Chinese market differs from the market in the United States. This central portion of the article emphasizes just how difficult it is to make predictions about what might happen in one nation’s housing market based on the experiences of another nation that differs in so many significant ways. Finally, the article provides a description of some of the worrisome similarities between the Chinese and American housing markets. To the extent the previous analysis may have comforted the reader into believing that the Chinese market is unlikely to experience a downturn anytime soon, this last discussion will create some apprehension by highlighting some of the ways in which China might, in fact, be heading down the same path as the United States.

Although millions of Americans live in 55-plus age-restricted housing, little research has been done to determine whether these communities benefit their residents, or the nation as a whole. This is particularly ironic because these communities exist in contravention to anti-discrimination laws by virtue of a specific exemption granted to real estate developers by an Act of Congress. Ordinarily age discrimination is prohibited by the Fair Housing Act, Title VIII of the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Successful lobbying by special interest groups carved out an exemption for 55-plus housing.

The original exemption required developers to offer elders special services and facilities in these communities in return for the exemption. Over time, those requirements were eliminated and now the only requirement is that these communities exclude families and children.

While lifestyles focused on golf and tennis may be attractive to younger retirees, older Americans often find themselves in communities bereft of the services and facilities they need for basic life activities and safety. The very nature of these communities result in elders left with depreciating homes, and many are without the financial means to retrofit their 55-plus home or to move into a community better adapted for their needs. This Article explores a popular form of “senior housing” that is unsuitable for most older Americans.

J.A. Pye (Oxford) Ltd.and another v. Graham and another (Pye), a recent U.K. case, raised the question of whether adverse possession may violate a human right to own property. The case implicated the then recent bringing adverse possession into the human rights realm. Yet, a review of the case as it moved through the U.K. courts and the European Court of Human Rights reveals, however, that courts have not embraced a consideration of adverse possession as playing a role in substantive human rights or social justice concerns. This is due, in part, to the dearth of human rights and social justice scholarship on the doctrine. Though human rights and social justice theorists have failed to fully develop the doctrine, their theories lay the groundwork for utilizing adverse possession as a tool to fashion new property systems. Utilizing adverse possession as a social justice tool can help foster systems with widespread property distribution while actively recognizing and supporting human rights of both owners and those seeking ownership.

Just today I witnessed a spirited discussion of adverse possession law, so its good to see some writing on the theory.

To guard against urban sprawl, many communities in the United States have begun enacting policies to preserve open space, often through local voter referenda. New Jersey sponsors such municipal action through the Green Acres Program by providing funding and low interest loans to towns that choose, through a referendum, to increase property taxes and spend the money raised on open space preservation for the purposes of conservation and/or recreation. Understanding which factors contribute to the appearance and success of these measures is important for policy makers and conservation advocates, not only in New Jersey, but across the United States. Although previous literature has examined this issue, this is the first study to account for spatial dependence/spatial autocorrelation and to explore dynamic issues through survival analysis. The traditional two stage model from the literature is extended by incorporating a Bayesian spatial probit for the first stage and a maximum-likelihood spatial error model in the second stage. A Cox – proportional hazard model is used to examine the timing of referenda appearance. Spatial dependence is found in the second stage of the analysis, indicating future studies should account for its influence. There is not strong evidence for spatial dependence or correlation in the first stage. The survival model is found to be a useful complement to the traditional probit analysis of the first stage.

Foreign Policy recently has published its Special Report "Cities Issue." While the issue is themed on urban affairs generally, its articles coalesce around the amazing urban development taking place in China. From the website intro:

Our special issue dedicated to the cities of the future has its eye squarely toward China, because the cities of the future are increasingly going to be speaking Mandarin -- even more than you realize. It's no longer news that China has embarked on the largest mass urbanization in history, a monumental migration from country to city that will leave China with nearly a billion urbanites by 2025 and an astonishing 221 cities with populations over 1 million. But this isn't just about size: It's about global heft. And that's where the scale of China's transformation into a world leader is truly astonishing. In an exclusive index for FP, the McKinsey Global Institute has run the numbers to produce what we're calling The 75 Most Dynamic Cities of 2025 -- an extraordinary 29 of which are in China. Some are already global powers, from top-ranked Shanghai to manufacturing dynamo Shenzhen; others, from Fuzhou to Xiamen, were little more than provincial backwaters in the 20th century but look to be household names in the 21st, powering the global economy not just through their sheer size but also through their urban innovation and pulsing drive. Europe, meanwhile, will manage only three cities on the list by 2025; the United States finishes second to China -- a very distant second -- with 13. Still think that debate about Western decline is overblown?